Chris Lombardi puts defense and security under the spotlight, as he shares his takes on recent NATO and EU cooperation and provides insight into the company’s own long-term strategic partnerships in Europe.

Three trends are currently driving the global electricity sector: decarbonization, decentralization and differentiation. Utilities are making significant contributions to mitigate carbon emissions, while a technology revolution is …

When the European Union’s national leaders met for a crisis summit on Thursday (6 March), they produced a three-phase plan of action designed to persuade Russia to ease the crisis in Ukraine precipitated by the seizure of the Crimean peninsula.

The plan, which extended from formalising the de facto situation – a suspension of the EU’s usual business – to the threat of far-reaching consequences for Russia across “a broad range of economic areas”, amounts to a compromise between those who argued for a sharp immediate response and those who wanted to delay action.

The plan was also intended to offer Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, an “exit strategy or an off-ramp”, in the words of Ukraine’s prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who attended the summit, or a “face-saving” device in the words of some European diplomats.

Among the exit options was the creation of a “contact group”, a possibility underscored by Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor. The composition of the “contact group” was not made clear, though there was an assumption that EU states would have a role, as would international organisations such as the United Nations, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe, all of which include Russia as a member.

The summit also left a major question dangling: would the holding of a referendum on Crimea’s accession to the Russian Federation be a trigger for more action?

In the days since, the composition of the contact group has remained unclear, and international diplomacy has remained largely bilateral, with the United States and Germany in the lead. However, the role of the Crimean referendum in determining EU action has become clearer. After a meeting between Merkel and the UK’s prime minister, David Cameron, on Sunday (9 March), the British government said that “any attempt by Russia to legitimise the result would result in further consequences”.

No retreat

In any case, ambiguities in the Western position have been rendered irrelevant by Russia’s refusal to retreat on any front, at least in public. It continues to deny that its troops are in Crimea or are responsible for steps described as “provocative” by the US.

It has not chosen from the menu of international organisations that it could engage with; instead, monitors from the OSCE have repeatedly encountered difficulties getting to parts of Ukraine. Russia has said that it is working on its own proposals for a diplomatic solution, but has indicated little about those plans, though a mooted meeting between Putin and the US secretary of state, John Kerry, was scotched by Russia’s precondition that the starting-point should be the status quo on 21 February, before the then president, Viktor Yanukovych, fled Kiev.

With Russia seemingly unwilling to take the ‘off-ramp’, the EU finds itself obliged to follow through on the sanctions that it has promised to take. But where exactly will those sanctions be targeted? And how severe might the economic measures be?